While Sri Lanka is grappling with an unprecedented foreign exchange crisis, Finance and Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera today advised the Commonwealth countries to redouble its efforts and begin implementing a well targeted and thought out economic recovery plan to buttress the financial fallout of increasingly frequent natural disasters.

Samaraweera made these remarks while addressing a Commonwealth Finance Ministers Meeting held today, in the margins of the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Bali, Indonesia.

"Sri Lanka welcomes these series of initiatives of the Commonwealth, that aims to enhance national capacities to reduce disaster risk," Samaraweera said.

"Vulnerability must be looked at not only from a trade and commerce point of view but must take into account financial risk as well. In an era where currencies and interest rates are volatile, mainly due to the unpredictability of external factors such as unprecedented challenges to the well established international trading regime and the consequential effects of spiraling energy costs, natural disasters may push smaller nations towards uncontrollable economic chaos.," he added.